Honey Moon (19 page)

The man beside Jenna beamed. “It only is because a princess”—the guy had the nerve to wink at Jenna—“whose size I know well is in it. Best I could do with three seconds’ notice. Did you know the beasts—took five ninjas—who kidnapped me wouldn’t give more than a half a minute to grab that dress and a few necessities before they threw me into a—thank the stars—jet, not a shuttle?”

“Ahem.” Keltz glowered at the man dwarfing Jenna.

“But enough about me.” The guy matched Keltz’s frown, his gaze steady on Sam. “I solemnly swear to go medieval on your ass if my girl ever loses that sweet smile. Understand?”

Jenna kicked Harding in the ankle.

His girl? Over my dead body.
“You work for the LC?”

“Oh no, dearie. Not anymore. Their politics, crimes are unforgivable. Beyond awful. Seems I was hired for bigoted reasons. You know…the fact I’ll not add to the population. I’d thought they’d wanted me because of my ungodly amount of natural talent.” He shuddered. “Attempting to wipe out straights is so sick. Cold-blooded murders of poor souls who can’t help their genetics. Horrendous. I could go on and on.”

Jenna groaned. “Lav, please. Sam, Kurt, Ma’am, this is Lavender Harding.”

Sam reached out and Harding took his hand. Firm grip. Didn’t let go. Well, two could play this game. He tightened his clasp. “So you know Jenna how? Related?”
Tell me the woman I’ve known for three days has a gay brother with lilac eyes.

Harding squeezed, released Sam’s fingers and smirked. “No. Met her merely hours ago. She fell hard for me, my skills.”

Jenna’s blush deepened.

Christ, she didn’t want her mom or a girlfriend, but some stranger to stand by her?

“And mate,” the guy went on, that intense lilac gaze ranking over Sam, “I guess your jealousy has foundation. I do have deliciously naughty incestuous feelings for the sister I dressed to please a reckless, selfish, attention-loving activist who almost got her killed.”

Sam drew back, guilt and anger seizing him by the throat. He parted his lips—

“Shut your mouth, Dexter,” Keltz grumbled. “I carry a licensed handgun. Any male who says anything other than ‘Yes’ or ‘I do’ in the next five minutes is getting plugged. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here yada yada. Samuel Dexter, do you take—”

“Yes.” Sam shot his left hand out toward Jenna as Harding dropped the gold ring in her hand.

Two minutes passed in slow motion until…

“You may kiss the bride.”

He did.
Mine. All mine. Until I die.
His arms eased tighter around Jenna. His mouth on hers went from gentle to gonna-rock-you-all-night-long, and his dick didn’t hesitate to hurtle the hardness scale while his heartbeat drummed with pride.

Too soon, Kurt grabbed his elbow and Sam cracked open his eyes.

Harding,
the bastard
, had Jenna’s arm and kudos for husband partially lifting and holding to wife so they could maintain contact as the men guided them toward the exit. Sam’s feet moved as if they trod on clouds, and he deepened the kiss. His lungs began aching, threatening to burst. He’d forgotten how to breathe through his nose, and forgotten to ask someone to rebind his ribs.

He didn’t care. He was never gonna let her… Harding,
the damn bastard
, pried them apart. Jenna stumbled and the long-haired man swung her into his arms.

Kurt took one side of Sam, Thomas grasped his other, and he went up onto their shoulders. A pair of WS—World Security—uniforms hurried them down the deserted corridor and into the bustling lobby.

Medical employees clapped and cheered,
double damn bastard
, at Harding and Jenna. The pair were dressed in matching white, the train of the dress draped over Harding’s arm, Sam’s bride ducked her head against a broad chest and rode in the guy’s arms as if she weighed as much as a toddler.

Kurt and Thomas burst out laughing at Sam’s sour look. They strode faster to catch up with the couple moving out the doors flanked by security, letting in the roar of an excited crowd. Shrieks bombarded his ears. It looked like hundreds, make that thousands, were pushed behind electronic ropes that could be set to either knock a man on his ass or cause permanent cardiac arrest, cordoning off a path of a hundred feet to a waiting chopper.

Young women wearing bright T-shirts with—Holy Christ—X-rated versions of the blog’s name across their bouncing chests squealed Sam’s name and ogled Harding.

“Oooh, look at his hair.”

“Such a cute couple.”

“He’s so hot.”

“Best butt—ever.”

Wrist phones were clicking frantically and a realization hit Sam, harsh and below his self-absorbed belt, emphasizing he was an overtired idiot. Harding not only carried Jenna to spare a celebrity with battered ribs, he also shielded a loner who’d spent the past decade avoiding the public eye. The Net would be flooded and software used to confirm identities. Any minute, it’d leak that the slumped man hoisted by friends behind the charismatic man blowing one-handed kisses to the crowd and shielding Jenna’s face, was the actual groom.

Fuck-fuck-fuck.
Why the drawn-out publicity show? What was taking security so long to punch Harding, so he stopped screwing around and hauled Jenna onto that chopper? The skin prickling between Sam’s shoulder blades became a horrifying itch. “Put me down,” he snapped.

“Be cool,” Kurt said as he and Thomas lowered Sam to his feet. “She’s not gonna fall for…”

He tuned the guy out and glared, gesturing at the nearest security—too late. Fear scrambled along his spine as the unthinkable happened. Jenna did fall. Directly from Harding’s arms as he bent, staggered and dropped her.

Through the din, Sam couldn’t hear any sharp crack to herald further shots—better aimed and to the head—but he anticipated.
Christ, Please-please-please.
“Get down,” he bellowed and lunged. Jenna was scrambling to catch her feet, twisting toward Harding, who had crimson splashed across the white leather pulled taut by a muscled back. Sam plowed into that back—purple hair ruffled as bullets flew past where Harding’s head had been—knocking the injured man down on top of Jenna. Harding yelped and went silent as Jenna cried out, smashed into the sidewalk beneath them.

Hands seized his shoulders. Kurt hefted him up to his feet and security swarmed in a protective circle. Two lifted Harding—limp with eyes closed—off Jenna and another grasped her, shielding her with their armor-protected bodies. Sam began breathing again as he noted she appeared dazed but unharmed.

The crowd stared, shocked into an eerie silence. That changed as heads swiveled upward toward the roof of the medical center and the figure dressed in black falling from the skyscraper. People yelled and gasped. Those in the way scrambled aside as the body landed, bounced and hit the concrete pathway, again to remain motionless.

They’d taken out the shooter, but the drilling band of tension circling Sam’s skull didn’t lessen. The men hovering around Jenna hustled her for the chopper. Security carried Harding by his shoulders and feet the opposite direction, back for the medical center. Sam opened his mouth but Kurt beat him to it.

“No, no. If he’s alive, he may not be for long inside there.”

The two agents paused. Sam barked, “On the chopper,” and the pair reversed course, carting the downed man to board behind Jenna.

Kurt turned to Thomas, who looked toward Harding with a deep frown on his face. “There’ll be a med-kit on the aircraft. Can’t you come with us?”

Thomas gave an abrupt nod, and Kurt and Sam ran to hop through the wide hanger door, the medic on their heels.

A man and a woman sporting brown government uniforms sat in the pilot seats. The two men in the silver colors of the WS, wearing impenetrable and lightweight armor, settled Harding on the chopper’s floor, and yet another WS agent guided Jenna to the bench along the side wall.

The pair who’d carried Harding jumped out of the chopper, leaving one WS member onboard. As his gaze locked on the woman in bloodstained white, the smooth lurch, a sinking feeling in his gut and the change in noise of the rotating blades told Sam they were airborne and rising straight up.

He staggered to Jenna’s side, sat and grasped her hand. “You’re okay, right?” Tears on her cheeks, blood on her hands and red dots sprayed across the front of the dress. So much for the first few minutes of married life to a notorious informer.

His bride didn’t answer, just stared at the long body sprawled on the floor eight feet away. Thomas and the WS guy were all over Harding, who lay motionless on his stomach, head cushioned by a blanket. They’d cut off the leather shirt, and Thomas pressed a compress below the shoulder blade as the security agent shoved a mop of purple hair aside to examine the side of Harding’s head.

“Think he’ll make it?” Sam asked.

Jenna swallowed hard, her body trembling. “Yeah. Because of you. Those bullets barely missed his head. Well, one may have clipped him but the blood is from his back.” She jerked her gaze to Sam, eyes wide with shock. “How’d you know?”

“Know what? That some assassin thought your friend was me?” He mocked a scowl. “If Kurt and Thomas weren’t holding onto me, I’d have tackled that lavender freak the moment he picked you,
my
wife, up. Who is he? Why—”

Jenna slapped her hand over his mouth.

In the olden days, before he’d become a criminal, he’d have respected the inalienable right of women to shut him up. But not this woman and not this day, when he should be the one mauled by medics. He pulled Jenna close and forced her hand aside. A simple shift of his tired arms and she sat on his lap, his hold unbendable and his hand covering her mouth.

“Look, it’s none… Yes, it is my damn business why you wanted some hotshot movie star type who works for the LC that you’ve known almost as long as you have me at our wedding, but can you explain why? What about parents?” He eased his hand off her mouth.

Jenna stared, her eyes glazed. “He was kind to me. I felt—feel—a strong connection and my parents are dead. No siblings. No friends who’d believe me. Sam…is Lav dead? Because of me?”

He bent to brush a kiss on her ashen cheek. “I’m sorry. Soon as we can, I want to know everything about you, including instant friends. He’s just a friend, right?”

“Yeah. Unlike you, I wasn’t even married before—”

He slapped his hand back over her mouth. “Kurt?” he called out. “He… Jenna’s friend, is he okay?”

Kurt shuffled forward to crouch in front of them. “Clean shot through the shoulder. Looks to me like he’ll be fine.”

“Head wound?” Sam watched Thomas apply some sort of spray to Harding’s temple.

“Just a crease. He’s still out because Thomas sedated him.”

Jenna heaved a deep sigh of relief. Sam released her mouth as the woman in the brown uniform marking her as government stepped from the cockpit. Kurt straightened and grabbed hold of a roof drop support while the woman thrust a wrist phone at Sam. “Admiral Keltz wants a word.”

“Er… Why doesn’t she use my line?”

“Deactivated, along with those of the other civilians on this aircraft.”

Sam arched his brows in puzzlement.

“The general public hasn’t yet been protected against the TandB virus,” the woman said.

“TandB?” Jenna wiggled and he reluctantly eased her off his lap to the bench.

“Tag and Bag.” Kurt snorted. “My…wife, Linda, her brother works in criminal tech. He filled me in. It’s a new way for killers to keep their hands clean, thanks to long-distance murder. A coward who has access to the PC—personal code—number, and can buy this seriously expensive software that tracks the signal from the last outgoing message the victim makes can even plan the timing so the vic about to have a fatal heart attack is in the locale they wish.”

Sam’s jaw sagged. “How’s that possible?”

Kurt shrugged. “The electric current is bundled in the virus that’s programmed to call and lock onto the signal from the last call from that PC number. Assuming the victim is aware of this virus, the killer can also play with him or her. A preliminary dose creates a pathway as current rides up the arm and into the chest. No outer cellular damage, a bit of a sharp tingle and not enough to fry the phone yet.

“The vic thinks what the fuck, starts to remove their wrist phone, but then the second jolt hits. It rockets on the already-conditioned path, powerful enough to toast the heart of a child or bring a fit man down. The third burns out his wrist phone, taking away any means to trace the incoming viral tag and guarantees he won’t get up. Takes about ten seconds. Can also be done through a com-desk.”

Christ. The world we live in.
“Is that true?” Sam glowered at the agent.

“Afraid so.” She sighed. “Government employees have constantly updated antivirals. Been told they haven’t gotten a handle on price to provide for the less targeted general populace.” She pushed the phone at Sam. “Ahh… The Admiral’s waiting. She’s… Well, it’s
not
a good idea to piss her off.”

His heartbeat steadily drumming in his ears, wondering if he was about to become smoking hot, Sam activated the phone for widescreen visual and full volume audio.